That's wild - farmland gets £11.8m makeover

Beavers, pigs, cattle and ponies are set to help transform former farmland into a wilder landscape in the first large-scale project under a flagship government programme.

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The Boothby Wildland project is in Lincolnshire

The Boothby Wildland project in Lincolnshire aims to be an exemplar of how to use private finance to secure nature restoration.

It is restoring nature on more than 1,500 acres of land - more than 500 football pitches - that was “hard” to farm by re-wig-gling the river and establishing beavers in a vast enclosure to create wetland habitat, improve water quality and halt flooding.

The team behind the scheme says it plans to introduce large grazing animals to help create a mosaic of grassland, scrub and wood pasture habitats.

The estate is owned by Nattergal, a company set up by leading environmentalists to drive and scale up private investment in nature restoration.